Wednesday, December 22, 2004

BLADE: TRINITY

The world premiere of footage from this threequel took place at an MTV Awards Red-Carpet Special. As you’d expect then, this is a film that proudly wears a WWVDD? wristband. Like 2 Fast 2 Furious however, Vin Diesel isn’t in it and it’s very, very bad. David S Goyer wrote the script and directed, so he’s first.
Most of his failings are down to the thinness (qualitative and quantitative) of his script. Abandoned plotlines about the vampires’ holocaust of the entire human race and the FBI catching on to Blade’s thousands of kills are left in the film as ‘undeleted’ scenes in an effort to fill out the hour and a half. Other tricks to this effect include hundred-kill action scenes which are about as much fun as watching older boys play beat-em-up games all day, hugely dated stylistic direction, slow motion mood montages that invariably look like adverts rejected by Hugo Boss and the most unnecessarily gratuitous swearing this side of Spawn: The Director’s Cut (gems include Ryan Reynolds’ admittedly well-delivered “You cock-juggling thundercunt!”). Women are used only for product placement, partial nudity, mink-wearing penis envy and most of all, unfunnily savage victimization. Moral points are lazily thrown in like fair trade pamphlets at a Starbucks, in the form of crude, throwaway sentences that make no sense. Worst of all though, Goyer treats the viewer like only he has seen The Matrix, borrowing scene after scene, almost in chronological order, utterly without consideration or elaboration. The office fight, skyscraper chase, car stomp and crater finale are all present (among many, many others) and the trailer even uses Rob D’s ‘Clubbed to Death’.
However, buried beneath the market-tested poochiness, the surreally poor storytelling and the four separate and very direct adverts for Macintosh products, lies a sarcophagus full of guilty pleasures. Most of this inadvertent success comes from the bad acting. Dominic Purcell and Parker Posey are atrocious, respectively setting new standards for charisma-free Draculas and annoying vampiresses. They might as well have cast Andre Agassi and Pink. Wrestler Hunter Hurst Helmsley, a.k.a. ‘HHH’ is actually made to emote on numerous occasions (“fuck!”) and the scene where he angrily runs after a car had even the moodiest City Hall-dwellers laughing popcorn out of their noses. It is simply impossible to predict the how the next line will be delivered. Great blurts to look out for include:

“Because it’s the cradle of civilization!”
“An asshole!”
“And when the hell did you see my dick, fuckface?”
“I am Caulder!”
and the immortal
“Motherfucker! I like that!”

Once the clichés have settled, you will realize that it’s as good as any film starring Ryan Reynolds’ pubes can be. Close your intellectual gag-reflex and repeat the mantra “It’s a very clever satire” over and over again and you’ll be just fine. Worked for xXx.